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+--- Thread: Pokémon TTRPGs (/showthread.php?tid=21)
Pokémon TTRPGs - hjkathman - 10-04-2026
Greetings Dead Letters fans,
I wanted to put forwards a thought exercise:
With the litany of the fan-made Pokémon TTRPGs out there, what do you believe would be the best approach to translating these games into the world of tabletop?
If you check the Pokémon tabletop Subreddit, you'll see that the most popular systems use a D20 system, with Pokémon Tabletop Adventures and the now defunct Pokémon Tabletop United being the most popular systems based on D&D. Though I am curious if you all think there's a better way to translate the mechanics of Pokémon battles in a way that maintains the mechanics of the video games without the crunch that would be necessary to account for every single system found in such games.
RE: Pokémon TTRPGs - misha - 10-13-2026
Oh, I thought I responded to this.
I think pokemon is in some ways tough, in some ways easy to adapt.
It's tough because crunchy mechanics, granular stats, and repetitive actions are so core to both the gameplay and the world. Being a video/card game feels very baked into the world-logic, in a way that would be tricky to convert to elegant TTRPG play. You end up needing to choose between a game that only marginally resembles Pokemon and a game that's borderline unplayable.
But it's easy because people love it, so it's fine for a game that's more about trad riffing and vibing. If people are just there with a beer and pretzels mindset, anything can work.
Have I mentioned on the podcast that my origin story (one of them, at least) is that my roommate homebrewed a pokemon TTRPG and ran it for our flophouse? I don't remember much about the details, and I'm sure it's not in line with my current philosophy on RPG design, but I also remember having a lot of fun at the time. This would have been back in like 2007, and is pretty directly responsible for me starting to look into RPG design.
RE: Pokémon TTRPGs - natknight - 10-17-2026
I wonder how many folks in this space have a "I made/witnessed a bad game when I was a kid" beat in their origin story. I certainly do (mine was submarine-based minis combat and it was terrible).
My gut says that this wants to be a series of little XP treadmills for your dudes plus an overall power treadmill for your squad. If combat is brisk and you always have some choices about how your XP treadmills are advancing (e.g. who gets last hits, which dude is battling the most, which dude(s) battled at all, etc.) you could drop that in a hex map with diegetic navigation (which evolves as you unlock different tools, of course) and some zone-based encounter tables to get something that's pretty close to 1) some established-fun patterns of play, and 2) the Pokemon fantasy.
Of course, the rub would be finely balancing all these XP treadmills for maximum fun, either by making it perfectly smooth (à la data-driven mobile game) or spiky enough to have texture.
Am I just describing Into the Oddish?